Start Date

12-16-2013

Description

A critical challenge faced by mobile app developers today is to effectively manage their app portfolio, but this issue has rarely been addressed in the IS academic literature. To address this gap, we empirically examine the relationship between the size and diversity of mobile developers’ app portfolio and their performance in a mobile platform. Using a data set from the Apple App Store, and based on panel-level linear model estimation, we find a negative impact of app portfolio diversity on developers’ performance. However, this impact decreases with portfolio size. This result implies that a diversified app portfolio hinders developers from fostering core competency, whereas their increasing development experience could mitigate this negative effect. Our results provide mobile app developers with a strategic growth trajectory recommendation, i.e., focus on product specialization during the early growth phases but adopt a diversification strategy after the accumulation of substantial development experience.

Downloads

Share

A critical challenge faced by mobile app developers today is to effectively manage their app portfolio, but this issue has rarely been addressed in the IS academic literature. To address this gap, we empirically examine the relationship between the size and diversity of mobile developers’ app portfolio and their performance in a mobile platform. Using a data set from the Apple App Store, and based on panel-level linear model estimation, we find a negative impact of app portfolio diversity on developers’ performance. However, this impact decreases with portfolio size. This result implies that a diversified app portfolio hinders developers from fostering core competency, whereas their increasing development experience could mitigate this negative effect. Our results provide mobile app developers with a strategic growth trajectory recommendation, i.e., focus on product specialization during the early growth phases but adopt a diversification strategy after the accumulation of substantial development experience.